


Chain Link, Barbed Wire

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: Homecoming [1]
Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/F, Family, Filling In the Gaps, Fix-It of Sorts, Girls Kissing, Home, Home is people, Returning Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 07:57:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19127827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: Debbie's been away from home a long time, now that she's finally out, she's not sure what she's really going back to.Debbie's second night after getting out of prison, the first night after she went home, the first night with Lou.





	Chain Link, Barbed Wire

She can hear the rain outside, echoing on the tarmac, on the roof... there's a strange acoustic to this place, and she's not sure whether it's just the mausoleum, or whether it's something about graveyards in general. They're different places, and although Debbie's never really been the superstitious type, there's no getting away from the fact that places that bridge life and death have a certain feel to them. 

She stares at the name engraved on the plaque, resists the urge to reach out and trace it with her fingers because that would make it concrete and she doesn't know that she's ready to accept that yet. She doesn't even know if he's really dead. In this family it's hard to tell. 

The almost-silence is broken by the clearing of a throat, and Debbie sighs a little as she steps back. 

"I know you're there Reuben. You can come on out."

He shuffled out, wrapped up against the elements, and Debbie can't help but smile because it's good to see him again, the first person from the old life she's seen since she got out, even if he wasn't quite who she had in mind. 

"I was just paying my respects."

"From around the corner?"

Debbie raises her eyebrow, though she can't keep the smile from her lips.

"What are you doing here?"

He sighs as he closes the gap between them, still so sweetly earnest about it.

"They thought I'd be the best one to talk to you"

Debbie sighs and turns on her heel, heading for the door because she didn't come here to be lectured. 

"Gotta go."

"He didn't want you to do this Deborah!"

That makes her turn, hands in her pockets, shoulders squared, though there's a limit to how rude she can be to this man who's like an uncle to her. Unlike most of her 'family', she does believe he actually cares a little bit about her welfare.

"Do what?"

Reuben shrugs a little, helpless about it, because she didn't feel like sharing the details of this particular plan. This one is all her own and she wasn't about to let anyone else take the credit, the glory, or the money for it. 

"Whatever it is you wouldn't tell us you're gonna do! Look Deb, sometimes just knowing the job will work is satisfaction enough, you don't actually gotta do it!"

Debbie regards him for a long moment, that not-quite smile still resting on her lips because they both know it's not like that, not really. Not for her.

"What else did he say"

Reuben sighs, shoulders slumping a little. 

"He said it was brilliant-"

"Oh..."

Debbie allows herself a little satisfaction at that. She'll take the credit where she can. 

"And that you would probably end up back in prison."

"I'm not gonna end up back in prison, okay?" She hears the beep of a car outside, and turns to go, not wanting to make her ride wait and also really just wanting to not be in this situation anymore. She's so tired of trying to defend herself. "I gotta go."

Reuben sighs, knowing he's not going to win this one, and instead he gazes at her, surprisingly heartfelt as he says:

"Be careful."

Debbie leans in to give him a soft kiss on the cheek, tweaking the end of his scarf as she smiles her trademark smile and turns to go.

"You're looking sharp..."

The rain hasn't eased off at all in the time she's been waiting, and she walks quickly over to the battered car. She's not willing to sacrifice her dignity enough to run, but she doesn't exactly want to linger as she puts her case in the back and then swings into the passenger seat, pleasantly surprised when Lou instantly leans over, wrapping her in a crushing embrace and pressing a kiss to her hair. Really she hadn't been certain at all of the reception she would get from the blonde and this is grounds to be cautiously optimistic.

"Hey, hey take it easy, been in the slammer."

She's going for light, easy, the kind of joking they used to share before she fucked it up because anything more than that is going to require courage she doesn't possess yet.

Lou snorts, matching her as she shoots back, "Oh I just thought you'd changed your number," and puts the car in gear, pulling smoothly away. 

Debbie relaxes a little and stares out at the road ahead. She's never needed to be able to see Lou to sense her when she's this close.

"Did you get the credit line?"

Business is safer than personal, it's territory that's familiar while she tries to find her feet again in a new world where nothing is certain and, for all her front, she's still a little disorientated.

"Not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know what it's for..."

Debbie sighs heavily, rolling her eyes, because she can't let herself think too much about Lou and what they shared and what she wants this to be moving forward because the job is safer territory. It's a chance to prove herself, to rebuild her life, and if revenge is maybe a small part of that then nobody needs to know just yet. She wants to pretend it was thinking about the job that got her through prison, and yes, it was, for the most part, and she doesn't want to admit all the times she thought about Lou instead.

"Don't do that."

Lou's voice cuts across her, and Debbie goes for innocence, with a limited degree of success.

"Do what?"

Lou's impression of her is more spot on than she'd really care to admit as the blonde rolls her eyes back with an expression of exasperated disgust.

"Ugh."

Debbie attempts to defend herself, but she's smiling a little and there's no heart to it.

"That would be my I've been in jail for five years and my partner lets me down face."

"I'm not your partner."

It stings more than she wants to admit, but she deserved that. It feels like the door slamming shut on the hope she has for a relationship, the prospects of a future, of friendship at least, if nothing more, but... well. Hopefully they can still be professional and maybe out of that she can build something new.

"Yet."

Lou says nothing and they continue the drive in silence until they pull up in a dusty parking lot near the river. Debbie steels herself to break the silence, keeping her tone light.

"This is nice... chain link, barbed wire..." she hesitates, then tugs out the silk scarf she acquired the day before, holding it out towards Lou, "Brought you something?"

The blonde takes it from her, examining it, and holding up the security tag still stapled into the corner.

"Oh. Um. Can I exchange something you stole?"

Debbie shrugs and turns back to the river because attempting eye contact with Lou stings a little right now.

"Well if you're gonna have problem with stealing you're not going to like the rest of this conversation."

Lou raises her eyebrow, prodding a little because just like Debbie knows how Lou works, or used to, Lou knows how to get information out of Debbie when she's in one of her more recalcitrant moods.

"We're gonna shoplift?"

"Maybe?"

Lou sighs and calls her out at last, obviously not willing to play along with it anymore. She never did have a lot of patience for some of Debbie's more frustrating games.

"No see this is what you do, you make me guess and then I'm interested, and then you think because I'm interested that I want to do it."

Debbie's a little defensive as she fires back, "Well don't you want to do things you're interested in?"

"Well I'm interested in brain surgery-"

"Well we know that's not going to happen."

Debbie almost winces, because the sparring had been fun, almost like old times, but that came out too harsh, that was too far, and she knows it as Lou shuts down, turning away from her and reaching to open the door. 

"Whatever. You don't wanna tell me-"

She blurts it out because she has to regain some control of this conersation, recapture Lou's interest, prove that she's still got something to offer and apologise without using so many words.

"It's jewels. Spectacular, great big blingy big old LIz Taylor jewels that are locked in a vault fifty feet underground."

That's worked, capturing Lou's attention again, and the blonde regards her for a long moment, crystal clear blue eyes flicking up and down her, evaluating her.

"How do we get them out of the vault?"

Debbie doesn't let her relief show, but she smirks playfully to cover her desire to reach out and touch her, to apologise, to thank her, anything at all... and she opens the door as she replies cryptically, "They're gonna bring them to us."

~

She follows Lou into the building. It's huge and cavernous, expansive and obviously a part of Lou's life that she knew nothing about.

The Australian tosses her keys onto the table then sighs as she spots the pile of mail waiting for her, picking it up with a sigh, "Oh bugger."

Debbie looks around, pausing near the entrance to admire what seems to be a converted warehouse. It's nice. There's something of Lou about it, and she'd guess it's a club. She hadn't known Lou was trying to go semi-legit, but... she hasn't ruled out the job just yet, so Debbie has a little hope.

"Nice place."

"Try heating it," Lou shoots back, striding across the room towards a little kitchen area, and Debbie has the feeling there's going to be imminent tea, "There's a room for you upstairs. Your stuff's upstairs too. You know, I borrowed some shit. Figured you weren't using it."

Debbie nods, because there's not much left to say, and heads for the indicated stairs to investigate what Lou's designated as her space in this life she's built without her.

She puts the case aside and tries to ignore the ache in her chest that's the way Lou's moved her out of her space. Really it's her own fault, and a consequence of being moved out of Lou's heart. She can't really expect or demand more than that, but it still hurts and it's going to keep nagging as a reminder of what she threw away. She should be grateful there's still a space for her at all. 

In an attempt to distract herself from that train of thought before it goes off the rails entirely, Debbie starts looking through her wardrobe to see what Lou kept. There's a lot of good stuff here, stuff with memories of jobs they pulled together... and this is perfect for what is undoubtedly one of her more stupid decisions, but right now Debbie's feeling a little self-destructive, and she wants to make a point. She had ways of getting information in prison, and that's how she knows exactly where she's going in this long white coat over a black dress, every inch the sophisticate. There's somebody with a debt to be paid, and right now she's just going to give notice of collection.

~

Lou takes one look at her when she walks back into the club, and reaches for the phone. Turns out their favourite Chinese place from the old days is still going, and Debbie tries to ignore the twinge at the way Lou still remembers her order. 

They're sitting down at the table, Lou has a ridiculous napkin on her head and they have bowls of deep-fried goodness in amazing sauces that they're working through with chopsticks. The lights are low and it feels... almost like home, almost safe. It's warm and dark, not like the coldness of her old cell, and being with Lou is a thousand times better than being with anyone else, and a million times better than being alone. Debbie knows that getting in her own head doesn't do her any favours, but it's harder to get out of it on her own.

"He saw you?"

"Oh yeah."

Lou's mouth is full as she asks the question Debbie herself has been wondering the answer to, "Why would you do something like that?"

She tilts her head, half-shrugging and offers:

"...Closure?"

"Bullshit."

There's a comfort to the way Lou calls her out, and Debbie knows how it might have looked that she went back to HIM so soon after getting out, but she hopes Lou understands, and to try to explain without words that she doesn't want him back, could never want him back, she slides what used to be a toothbrush across the table without comment.

Lou picks it up, examining it, testing the blade with the pad of her thumb, her eyes are dark as they flick back to Debbie, "Jesus. So did you...?" She makes an unmistakeable overhand motion, not dissimilar to Psycho, and Debbie grins.

She flicks the button across the table, "No, just a little button."

Lou shakes her head without comment, btu she's smiling and Debbie can feel a little more of the tension bleed out of the air because without having to try to find words for it, which has never been her strong suit, she's managed to let Lou know where she stands on the issue of Claude, and that's one ghost laid to rest. It doesn't really do anything to make up for what happened before, but it takes the knife out of the wound so that hopefully the healing process can start.

They clear up together after dinner in silence, and Debbie is relieved to find she can still follow Lou's cues, still fit back into this space without disturbing the edges of it and getting in the way. She wants to belong here but so much has changed in six years and really she couldn't have expected otherwise. This is more than she deserves. She broke Lou's heart and threw away the relationship they had for a manipulative piece of shit who didn't understand the rules of the game, or at least, not the rules Debbie had grown up with. He'd changed the game, and now Debbie was going to beat him at it on his terms. 

Her momentum was arrested pretty sharply when it came time to go to bed, and Debbie found herself paralysed on the threshold to the room Lou had said was hers. The hotel had been easy, the hotel had felt like a dream, riding high on the euphoria of finally getting out and discovering she hadn't lost her touch. The hotel had been... not quite real, like a waiting room before stepping back into the rest of her life. This was falling back down to earth with a bump, and she's fighting down the panic that's threatening to consume her because all she wants right now is to cling on to something certain and Lou is... well, she lost the right to that six years ago.

She tries to make herself step forward but her heart is in her throat and she can't breathe or swallow, and she can't move. It's like trying to make herself take a step off the edge of a cliff over an abyss. She's terrified of being alone in there, of the silence, of all the demons nipping at the heels of her mind, and she can't move.

She hears Lou's footsteps behind her, hears them stop, her skin is prickling with the awareness of the way Lou is watching her but she still can't move, and she can't look at Lou either because if she does she'll end up begging and Debbie Ocean doesn't beg.

When she finally hears Lou speak, it's as if it's from a long way away. 

"...Well, you coming?"

That frees her up enough to move, to turn her head and look at Lou and she doesn't want to think too hard about the naked desperation on her face, because she can't mask it. Honestly Debbie doesn't think she's ever felt more vulnerable.

Lou is carefully expressionless, but she's holding open the door to her room like she's waiting for something, and Debbie walks over slowly, by force of will alone, feeling as though her feet are made of lead. 

Lou's room feels like Lou, and a little more of the tension bleeds out of her and she is trying desperately to stamp out any embers of hope that this is anything more than kindness, or perhaps even pity. 

Lou doesn't look at her while she changes, unbuttoning her shirt and hanging it on the back of a chair, setting her tie and waistcoat over the back of it. She strips off her pants and bra, and pulls on a t-shirt that hangs down to her hips and Debbie knows she's staring at the acres of smooth familiar skin and it hurts not to be able to reach out and touch it, but she can't. 

Lou heads for the bathroom, glancing back over her shoulder and it's almost casual as she says:

"Well? You sleeping in that?"

It's as if the spell holding her in place has been lifted, and Debbie can move freely. She all but runs back to the room that's full of her stuff and rummages until she finds an old nightdress. It's one she used to wear with Lou, one she left behind and never took with her when she went over to Claude's, one which is mercifully untainted, and she sheds her clothes like an unwanted skin and tugs it over her head, smoothing it down. It's black silk, trimmed with lace and it comes down to mid-thigh with spaghetti straps at her shoulders and Debbie feels suprisingly naked. When she makes her way back it's a lot more tentative than it was when she left on her mission. 

Lou is waiting for her, watching, and she says nothing as Debbie uncertainly heads to the bathroom, almost surprised to find a spare toothbrush laid out on the side in a glass. She cleans her teeth and washes her face, staring at her reflection in the mirror and searching in vain for someone she recognises. 

When Debbie is finally finished, she heads back out into the bedroom to find Lou in the bed, tucked over on the far side. She holds the blankets up, and Debbie moves to climb in with her, still surprised, still uncertain, stiff as a board as Lou lets the sheets fall, long limbs and chaotic and messy and taking up space because Lou has never been afraid to exist.

"Goodnight."

Lou turns the light off and turns over and Debbie lies there in the darkness, feeling her heart pounding against her ribs, hearing her blood rushing in her ears, and she's so tense it's aching in her muscles but she can't relax. She closes her eyes and tries to calm her breathing, to relax her muscles one by one and sleep. 

It almost works. When she opens her eyes again the room is still dark and Debbie has no sense of how much time has passed, whether it's minutes or hours, but she still feels on edge, her fight or flight reflex going haywire and adrenaline pounding in her veins. She knows she must have gotten some sleep because rather than lying separately with an unbridgeable void between them, Lou is pressed up against her back, one arm slung casually over Debbie's waist with a possessiveness she's missed and Debbie wants so badly to trust this and melt back into it, except that Lou's done it without being conscious of it and Debbie doesn't think she can handle the intimacy being ripped away from her again when Lou wakes up and remembers that she hates her.

It’s strange how silence can be as powerful as noise in some ways. The absence of familiar sounds, or any sound at all can be… jarring, disorienting, discomforting. It’s an uncomfortable realisation which in some ways feels like she should have had it months ago, years even. Noise was a factor in prison life, it was inescapable, even in the silences. When life was ruled by a bell, listening out for that bell dictated the rhythm of everything and a body became conditioned. When she’d first gotten out, Debbie had been burning adrenaline and had gone on without crashing for about thirty hours. When she’d crashed, she’d crashed hard, and hard enough that the absence of yelling and screaming and alarms didn’t figure. It wasn’t the first night that it caught up with her, or even the second, but the third night, tucked up in bed with Lou in the echoing silence of the club Debbie finds she can’t sleep. 

It’s ridiculous, really. The bed is comfortable, she’s not alone in it, it’s warm and comfortable, and Lou is cuddled up to her back where she belongs but the silence is echoing in Debbie’s ears and her heart is pounding in her chest and her blood is rushing in her ears and she’s staring out into the darkness because something is wrong and she doesn’t know what it is, but every danger sense in her body is screaming.

She isn’t sure how long she’s been lying there when she feels Lou shift, nuzzling her neck, the hand resting on her stomach stroking gently over her skin. 

“Babe?”

Lou’s voice is husky with sleep and /fuck/ she can feel it on her skin and it’s so good… but she’s still tense, and even though hearing Lou’s voice makes her relax, the ache that’s left behind makes her realise just how tightly she’d been holding herself. 

“…Yeah?”

“…You okay?”

“…Yeah?”

“…I don’t believe you?”

Debbie shifts in the sheets, considering turning over... maybe it'll distract Lou from the issue at hand, so she rolls over and tucks close, skimming her hand down Lou's side and glancing up through her lashes, nose to nose. 

"I'm fine..."

"Don't lie to me. Not now. Not already. I don't want to go back to this, Deb."

"I'm fine... I just... I don't know. It's quiet."

"Yeah it is."

"Just going to take some getting used to I suppose..."

"Yeah, well, a lot of this is going to take some getting used to."

"...Are you... sure? About this?"

"About what?"

Debbie hesitates, eyes down as she swallows, trying to banish the lump in her throat. 

"...I thought you hated me."

Lou shifts a little, propping her head up on one hand to look at Debbie. 

"I don't hate you."

Debbie still can't meet her eyes. 

"I hurt you."

"Yeah. You did."

Lou's voice is even and steady and Debbie doesn't understand how she can do it. When she replies, her own voice is small, barely audible. 

"I love you."

"Do you?"

Debbie pauses a moment, then nods, looking up once more to meet Lou's eyes. 

"Yeah. I do. I... had a lot of time to think, inside. Most of the time I focused on the job, on covering it from every angle, on making sure that it would run like clockwork every time, but when I wasn't thinking about that... I never thought about Claude. He was... a distraction, a mistake, a stupid fucking choice I made because deep down I knew I loved you and I was terrified. I didn't know whether... if I told you you'd leave, because I couldn't have blamed you for that, whether if I told you you'd tell me no, but we could still be partners and then we couldn't be partners because it would have ruined everything, and... I didn't know if I was... ready to admit to myself that I loved you. Prison crystallised a lot of things for me. So if you hate me, I get that, and if we can never go back to what we had before, I get that, and if you... I hope you're happy, honestly, maybe that you've found someone else who can treat you better and be what you deserve, but I... love you. And even if you can't love me back, I hope we can have... something."

Lou is silent for a long moment as she regards Debbie in the low light, and slowly shakes her head, and Debbie feels sick as her heart plummets through the floor... but Lou is smiling just a little, the way she smiles at Debbie so often, the way she's never smiled at anyone else. 

"...You think too fuckin' much, Ocean."

And Debbie /melts/ into Lou's touch when her hand comes to cup Debbie's cheek, stroking a misplaced strand of hair back behind her ear, her eyes fluttering closed as she angles her whole body towards it because it feels like an anchor point and she feels like she's falling all at once as Lou claims her lips and it aches to feel like she's coming home. 

She can't help but ask, even as her mind is screaming at her to stay quiet, not to destroy this a second time, to just be grateful for what she has. 

"...So what is this going to be?"

"Tell you what, how about we figure it out together?"


End file.
